Topic continuity and optional case marking in Pesh (Chibchan, Honduras) - HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Communication dans un congrès Année : 2022

Topic continuity and optional case marking in Pesh (Chibchan, Honduras)

Résumé

In Pesh (ISO 639-3 pay; Honduras, Chibchan), case marking of arguments is optional. While arguments are expressed more frequently without a case marker (86.7%), in this paper my goal is to explore the conditions under which an argument is flagged with case marking. The optionality cannot be explainable by morphological or syntactic environments. Based on a corpus annotated according to Givón's method (1983, 1994), which focuses on accessibility and topical continuity, I show that the majority of arguments that are marked by a case marker have given and persistent referents. These given arguments are coded as NPs or PROs marked by a case marker, contrary to what the authors write about the lighter codification of a given referent (Chafe 1976, Givón 1983, Krifka 2008). The motivation for this heavier expression is the contrastiveness of the referent. I show how the unexpected combination of givenness and contrastiveness constitute in Pesh given referents that indicate an alternative, exclude other alternatives, or highlight surprising information. At information structure level, they consist of a topic that contains a focus, which is doing what focus always does, namely indicating an alternative. Case marking in Pesh is motivated by contrastiveness, whether the referent is given (61.5%), shared (12.2%) or new (21.4%). The characteristic that distinguishes given, shared and new referents is persistence. Most often, given referents are marked by the ergative case or the absolutive case when they are persistent. For their part, shared and new referents are used to introduce an unexpected and surprising information involved in an important event at some specific moment. These contrastive referents are almost all non-persistent in the clauses following their mention. When they are marked by a case marker, shared referents prefer the absolutive case marker and usually they are non-persistent. On the contrary, new referents are marked by one of the two cases. The other occurrences of case marking (4.9%) are motivated by the discriminative function, to avoid a possible ambiguity between A and other participants of an event (only the ergative case for A).
Loading...
Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

halshs-04064102, version 1 (11-04-2023)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-04064102 , version 1

Citer

Claudine Chamoreau. Topic continuity and optional case marking in Pesh (Chibchan, Honduras). Topic persistence and Topic accessibility in languages of the word, CNRS; INALCO; LABEX-EFL, Jun 2022, Paris, France. ⟨halshs-04064102⟩
16 Consultations
0 Téléchargements
Dernière date de mise à jour le 19/05/2024
comment ces indicateurs sont-ils produits

Partager

Gmail Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Plus